The Indian Drum Part 1

The Indian Drum.

by William MacHarg and Edwin Balmer.

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHOM THE STORM HAUNTED

Near the northern end of Lake Michigan, where the bluff-bowed ore-carriers and the big, low-lying, wheat-laden steel freighters from Lake Superior push out from the Straits of Mackinac and dispute the right of way, in the island divided channel, with the white-and-gold, electric lighted, wireless equipped pa.s.senger steamers bound for Detroit and Buffalo, there is a copse of pine and hemlock back from the shingly beach. From this copse--dark, blue, primeval, silent at most times as when the Great Manitou ruled his inland waters--there comes at time of storm a sound like the booming of an old Indian drum. This drum beat, so the tradition says, whenever the lake took a life; and, as a sign perhaps that it is still the Manitou who rules the waters in spite of all the commerce of the cities, the drum still beats its roll for every ship lost on the lake, one beat for every life.

So--men say--they heard and counted the beatings of the drum to thirty-five upon the hour when, as afterward they learned, the great steel steamer _Wenota_ sank with twenty-four of its crew and eleven pa.s.sengers; so--men say--they heard the requiem of the five who went down with the schooner _Grant_; and of the seventeen lost with the _Susan Hart_; and so of a score of ships more. Once only, it is told, has the drum counted wrong.

At the height of the great storm of December, 1895, the drum beat the roll of a sinking ship. One, two, three--the hearers counted the drum beats, time and again, in their intermitted booming, to twenty-four.

They waited, therefore, for report of a ship lost with twenty-four lives; no such news came. The new steel freighter _Miwaka_, on her maiden trip during the storm with twenty-five--not twenty-four--aboard never made her port; no news was ever heard from her; no wreckage ever was found. On this account, throughout the families whose fathers, brothers, and sons were the officers and crew of the _Miwaka_, there stirred for a time a desperate belief that one of the men on the _Miwaka_ was saved; that somewhere, somehow, he was alive and might return. The day of the destruction of the _Miwaka_ was fixed as December fifth by the time at which she pa.s.sed the government lookout at the Straits; the hour was fixed as five o'clock in the morning only by the sounding of the drum.

The region, filled with Indian legend and with memories of wrecks, encourages such beliefs as this. To northward and to westward a half dozen warning lights--Ile-aux-Galets ("Skilligalee" the lake men call it), Waugaushance, Beaver, and Fox Islands--gleam spectrally where the bone-white shingle outcrops above the water, or blur ghostlike in the haze; on the dark knolls topping the glistening sand bluffs to northward, Chippewas and Ottawas, a century and a half ago, quarreled over the prisoners after the ma.s.sacre at Fort Mackinac; to southward, where other hills frown down upon Little Traverse Bay, the black-robed priests in their chapel chant the same ma.s.ses their predecessors chanted to the Indians of that time. So, whatever may be the origin of that drum, its meaning is not questioned by the forlorn descendants of those Indians, who now make beadwork and sweet-gra.s.s baskets for their summer trade, or by the more credulous of the white fishermen and farmers; men whose word on any other subject would receive unquestioning credence will tell you they have heard the drum.

But at bottom, of course, this is only the absurdest of superst.i.tions, which can affect in no way men who to-day ship ore in steel bottoms to the mills of Gary and carry gasoline-engine reaped and threshed wheat to the elevators of Chicago. It is recorded, therefore, only as a superst.i.tion which for twenty-years has been connected with the loss of a great ship.

Storm--the stinging, frozen sleet-slash of the February norther whistling down the floe-jammed length of the lake--was a.s.saulting Chicago. Over the lake it was a white, whirling maelstrom, obscuring at midafternoon even the lighthouses at the harbor entrance; beyond that, the winter boats trying for the harbor mouth were bellowing blindly at bay before the jammed ice, and foghorns and sirens echoed loudly in the city in the lulls of the storm.

Battering against the fronts of the row of club buildings, fashionable hotels, and shops which face across the narrow strip of park to the lake front in downtown Chicago, the gale swirled and eddied the sleet till all the wide windows, warm within, were frosted. So heavy was this frost on the panes of the Fort Dearborn Club--one of the staidest of the down-town clubs for men--that the great log fires blazing on the open hearths added appreciable light as well as warmth to the rooms.

The few members present at this hour of the afternoon showed by their lazy att.i.tudes and the desultoriness of their conversation the dulling of vitality which warmth and shelter bring on a day of cold and storm.

On one, however, the storm had had a contrary effect. With swift, uneven steps he paced now one room, now another; from time to time he stopped abruptly by a window, sc.r.a.ped from it with finger nail the frost, stared out for an instant through the little opening he had made, then resumed as abruptly his nervous pacing with a manner so uneasy and distraught that, since his arrival at the club an hour before, none even among those who knew him best had ventured to speak to him.

There are, in every great city, a few individuals who from their fullness of experience in an epoch of the city's life come to epitomize that epoch in the general mind; when one thinks of a city or of a section of the country in more personal terms than its square miles, its towering buildings, and its censused millions, one must think of those individuals. Almost every great industry owns one and seldom more than one; that often enough is not, in a money sense, the predominant figure of his industry; others of his rivals or even of his partners may be actually more powerful than he; but he is the personality; he represents to the outsiders the romance and mystery of the secrets and early, naked adventures of the great achievement.

Thus, to think of the great mercantile establishments of State Street is to think immediately of one man; another very vivid and picturesque personality stands for the stockyards; another rises from the wheat pit; one more from the banks; one from the steel works. The man who was pacing restlessly and alone the rooms of the Fort Dearborn Club on this stormy afternoon was the man who, to most people, bodied forth the life underlying all other commerce thereabouts but the least known, the life of the lakes.

The lakes, which mark unmistakably those who get their living from them, had put their marks on him. Though he was slight in frame with a spare, almost ascetic leanness, he had the wiry strength and endurance of the man whose youth had been pa.s.sed upon the water. He was very close to sixty now, but his thick, straight hair was still jet black except for a slash of pure white above one temple; his brows were black above his deep blue eyes. Unforgettable eyes, they were; they gazed at one directly with surprising, disconcerting intrusion into one's thoughts; then, before amazement altered to resentment, one realized that, though he was still gazing, his eyes were vacant with speculation--a strange, lonely withdrawal into himself. His acquaintances, in explaining him to strangers, said he had lived too much by himself of late; he and one man servant shared the great house which had been unchanged--and in which nothing appeared to have been worn out or have needed replacing--since his wife left him, suddenly and unaccountably, about twenty years before. At that time he had looked much the same as now; since then, the white slash upon his temple had grown a bit broader perhaps; his nose had become a trifle aquiline, his chin more sensitive, his well formed hands a little more slender. People said he looked more French, referring to his father who was known to have been a skin-hunter north of Lake Superior in the 50's but who later married an English girl at Mackinac and settled down to become a trader in the woods of the North Peninsula, where Benjamin Corvet was born.

During his boyhood, men came to the peninsula to cut timber; young Corvet worked with them and began building ships. Thirty-five years ago, he had been only one of the hundreds with his fortune in the fate of a single bottom; but to-day in Cleveland, in Duluth, in Chicago, more than a score of great steamers under the names of various interdependent companies were owned or controlled by him and his two partners, Sherrill and young Spearman.

He was a quiet, gentle-mannered man. At times, however, he suffered from fits of intense irritability, and these of late had increased in frequency and violence. It had been noticed that these outbursts occurred generally at times of storm upon the lake, but the mere threat of financial loss through the destruction of one or even more of his ships was not now enough to cause them; it was believed that they were the result of some obscure physical reaction to the storm, and that this had grown upon him as he grew older.

To-day his irritability was so marked, his uneasiness so much greater than any one had seen it before, that the attendant whom Corvet had sent, a half hour earlier, to reserve his usual table for him in the grill--"the table by the second window"--had started away without daring to ask whether the table was to be set for one or more. Corvet himself had corrected the omission: "For two," he had shot after the man. Now, as his uneven footsteps carried him to the door of the grill, and he went in, the steward, who had started forward at sight of him, suddenly stopped, and the waiter a.s.signed to his table stood nervously uncertain, not knowing whether to give his customary greeting or to efface himself as much as possible.

The tables, at this hour, were all unoccupied. Corvet crossed to the one he had reserved and sat down; he turned immediately to the window at his side and sc.r.a.ped on it a little clear opening through which he could see the storm outside. Ten minutes later he looked up sharply but did not rise, as the man he had been awaiting--Spearman, the younger of his two partners--came in.

Spearman's first words, audible through the big room, made plain that he was late to an appointment asked by Corvet; his acknowledgment of this took the form of an apology, but one which, in tone different from Spearman's usual bluff, hearty manner, seemed almost contemptuous. He seated himself, his big, powerful hands clasped on the table, his gray eyes studying Corvet closely. As Corvet, without acknowledging the apology, took the pad and began to write an order for both, Spearman interfered; he had already lunched; he would take only a cigar. The waiter took the order and went away.

When he returned, the two men were obviously in bitter quarrel.

Corvet's tone, low pitched but violent, sounded steadily in the room, though his words were inaudible. The waiter, as he set the food upon the table, felt relief that Corvet's outburst had fallen on other shoulders than his.

It had fallen, in fact, upon the shoulders best able to bear it.

Spearman--still called, though he was slightly over forty now, "young"

Spearman--was the power in the great ship-owning company of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. Corvet had withdrawn, during recent years, almost entirely from active life; some said the sorrow and mortification of his wife's leaving him had made him choose more and more the seclusion of his library in the big lonely house on the North Sh.o.r.e, and had given Spearman the chance to rise; but those most intimately acquainted with the affairs of the great ship-owning firm maintained that Spearman's rise had not been granted him but had been forced by Spearman himself. In any case, Spearman was not the one to accept Corvet's irritation meekly.

For nearly an hour, the quarrel continued with intermitted truces of silence. The waiter, listening, as waiters always do, caught at times single sentences.

"You have had that idea for some time?" he heard from Corvet.

"We have had an understanding for more than a month."

"How definite?"

Spearman's answer was not audible, but it more intensely agitated Corvet; his lips set; a hand which held his fork clasped and unclasped nervously; he dropped his fork and, after that, made no pretense of eating.

The waiter, following this, caught only single words.

"Sherrill"--that, of course, was the other partner. "Constance"--that was Sherrill's daughter. The other names he heard were names of ships.

But, as the quarrel went on, the manners of the two men changed; Spearman, who at first had been a.s.sailed by Corvet, now was a.s.sailing him. Corvet sat back in his seat, while Spearman pulled at his cigar and now and then took it from his lips and gestured with it between his fingers, as he jerked some e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n across the table.

Corvet leaned over to the frosted window, as he had done when alone, and looked out. Spearman shot a comment which made Corvet wince and draw back from the window; then Spearman rose. He delayed, standing, to light another cigar deliberately and with studied slowness. Corvet looked up at him once and asked a question, to which Spearman replied with a snap of the burnt match down on the table; he turned abruptly and strode from the room. Corvet sat motionless.

The revulsion to self-control, sometimes even to apology, which ordinarily followed Corvet's bursts of irritation had not come to him; his agitation plainly had increased. He pushed from him his uneaten luncheon and got up slowly. He went out to the coat room, where the attendant handed him his coat and hat. He hung the coat upon his arm.

The doorman, acquainted with him for many years, ventured to suggest a cab. Corvet, staring strangely at him, shook his head.

"At least, sir," the man urged, "put on your coat."

Corvet ignored him.

He winced as he stepped out into the smarting, blinding swirl of sleet, but his shrinking was not physical; it was mental, the unconscious reaction to some thought the storm called up. The hour was barely four o'clock, but so dark was it with the storm that the shop windows were lit; motorcars, slipping and skidding up the broad boulevard, with headlights burning; kept their signals clattering constantly to warn other drivers blinded by the snow. The sleet-swept sidewalks were almost deserted; here or there, before a hotel or one of the shops, a limousine came to the curb, and the pa.s.sengers dashed swiftly across the walk to shelter.

Corvet, still carrying his coat upon his arm, turned northward along Michigan Avenue, facing into the gale. The sleet beat upon his face and lodged in the folds of his clothing without his heeding it.

Suddenly he aroused. "One--two--three--four!" he counted the long, booming blasts of a steam whistle. A steamer out on that snow-shrouded lake was in distress. The sound ceased, and the gale bore in only the ordinary storm and fog signals. Corvet recognized the foghorn at the lighthouse at the end of the government pier; the light, he knew, was turning white, red, white, red, white behind the curtain of sleet; other steam vessels, not in distress, blew their blasts; the long four of the steamer calling for help cut in again.

Corvet stopped, drew up his shoulders, and stood staring out toward the lake, as the signal blasts of distress boomed and boomed again. Color came now into his pale cheeks for an instant. A siren swelled and shrieked, died away wailing, shrieked louder and stopped; the four blasts blew again, and the siren wailed in answer.

A door opened behind Corvet; warm air rushed out, laden with sweet, heavy odors--chocolate and candy; girls' laughter, exaggerated exclamations, laughter again came with it; and two girls holding their m.u.f.fs before their faces pa.s.sed by.

"See you to-night, dear."

"Yes; I'll be there--if he comes."

"Oh, he'll come!"

They ran to different limousines, scurried in, and the cars swept off.

Corvet turned about to the tearoom from which they had come; he could see, as the door opened again, a dozen tables with their white cloths, shining silver, and steaming little porcelain pots; twenty or thirty girls and young women were refreshing themselves, pleasantly, after shopping or fittings or a concert; a few young men were sipping chocolate with them. The blast of the distress signal, the scream of the siren, must have come to them when the door was opened; but, if they heard it at all, they gave it no attention; the clatter and laughter and sipping of chocolate and tea was interrupted only by those who reached quickly for a shopping list or some filmy possession threatened by the draft. They were as oblivious to the lake in front of their windows, to the ship struggling for life in the storm, as though the snow were a screen which shut them into a distant world.

To Corvet, a lake man for forty years, there was nothing strange in this. Twenty miles, from north to south, the city--its business blocks, its hotels and restaurants, its homes--faced the water and, except where the piers formed the harbor, all unprotected water, an open sea where in times of storm ships sank and grounded, men fought for their lives against the elements and, losing, drowned and died; and Corvet was well aware that likely enough none of those in that tearoom or in that whole building knew what four long blasts meant when they were blown as they were now, or what the siren meant that answered.

But now, as he listened to the blasts which seemed to have grown more desperate, this profoundly affected Corvet. He moved once to stop one of the couples coming from the tearoom. They hesitated, as he stared at them; then, when they had pa.s.sed him, they glanced back. Corvet shook himself together and went on.

He continued to go north. He had not seemed, in the beginning, to have made conscious choice of this direction; but now he was following it purposely. He stopped once at a shop which sold men's things to make a telephone call. He asked for Miss Sherrill when the number answered; but he did not wish to speak to her, he said; he wanted merely to be sure she would be there if he stopped in to see her in half an hour.

Then--north again. He crossed the bridge. Now, fifteen minutes later, he came in sight of the lake once more.